Stranger by N.M. Catalano

in.  I turn the corner and go in for my cookies and cream fix, I can’t resist the temptation.
    The rest of the evening I spend pampering.  It’s been years since I’ve done this and I promise myself I’m going to put me first again.  I deep condition my hair and mask my face before a long hot bath.  Next is a manicure and pedicure, nude on my fingernails and red on my feet.  I finish off my self-indulgent night with the movie P.S. I Love You.  It’s all about allowing yourself to live again and that’s exactly how I feel, I feel like I’ve been brought back to life.  All the while Marco’s ghost is my ever present companion with thoughts of him filling me.  The memories of his smell, his touch, his taste are still so fresh on my mind and body.
    Lying in bed with my eyes closed my thoughts drift through everything that has happened to me until this point.  It’s like I’m looking at the highlights of a movie on mute clicking frame by frame.  Woman is drawn to a man.  Click.  Woman worships that man.  Click.  Man appears to adore woman.  Click.  Man opens woman’s passion.   Click. Woman gives up everything for that man.  Click.  Man beats woman completely, emotionally and physically. Click.  Woman is alone and withdrawn.  Click.  Mesmerizing stranger appears.  Click.  Stranger pulls woman in.  Click.  Woman let’s go to desire.  Click.  Woman is alive again...  Next frame please.  Nothing.  What’s the next frame going to be?  I don’t know and I shiver with a tinge of fear from things I’d thought I’d buried deep and I push them back.  It’s up to me to decide if I’m going to continue to hide because of Santino’s threats or will I allow myself to live my life fully and do whatever I have to in order to do that.

 
    Chapter 4
    Monday morning.  Ugh.  Here’s a little message for you: 
    “Dear Monday, fuck you.”
    9:30 and there’s already a shitload of calls to make, quotes to catch up on and follow-ups to do.  And I can’t get my mind off that mysterious man, Marco, who controlled my body and took me to places I’d hungered for never realizing they were real.  He blew into my life like a hurricane sweeping me in for hours then leaving me washed on the shore under the bright sunshine as the waves lapped lovingly at my skin as I wondered if it had all been a dream.  My breath catches and my body reacts to the memories.  It definitely wasn’t a dream. 
    Another ripple of fear threatens to bubble to the surface and I push it back again.  ‘No, there’s no way Santino can find out about him.  There’s no trail, no emails, nothing that can link me to him.  No one knows but us.’  I relax content with carrying these memories in my soul until I’m old and grey when I can pull them out and remember that passionate night of sweet abandonment.
    I jump as my phone rings.  I see it’s Carol who is the senior rep in the office and I smile.  I love that woman.  She’s the most endearing person I’ve ever met.  Carol is the epitome of good things in small packages, strong and badass, she’s former military and she even keeps a small gun in her desk.  Yet she’s kind and gentle. 
    “Yes?”
    “Miss Sue Whiggins, get in here now.”
    I laugh out loud at the joke.  She and I play at that old Carol Burnett skit.  I’m Carol Burnett as the secretary, because I’ve got the ‘junk in the trunk’ as Carol says, and she’s Tim Conway as the boss. 
    I walk across the hall to her office and sit in the chair across from her.  There’s a lull in the traffic and calls coming in to the office right now so we take a five minute break to have a little girl time.
    “So, what’s up with you, Elizabeth?”  She leans over her desk leering at me scrunching her eyes like she’s about to interrogate me and I feel the blush heat my face.  Damn, I can’t hide anything from her.
    “Nothing, why?”
    “Don’t give me that crap.  What’s up?”
    I let out a